Same as the subject line, how to attract sitters close to the holidays. I had someone scheduled a few months in advance and she cancelled. Now I’m two weeks out and have not received any one interested 
@Lisabentson7 sorry to hear your sitter cancelled at short notice, did they have a valid reason ?
If you link your listing to your forum profile forum members can make some suggestions.
https://forum.trustedhousesitters.com/t/how-to-add-a-listing-or-profile-link-to-your-forum-profile
You can search for and invite sitters.
I’m a sitter and I’ve had a lot of owners message me directly so I’d try that!
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@Looney But how often have you accepted such invitations?
I believe that the success rate is very low. I have had some real nice invitations (from previous sits) but so far none of those have fitted my plans.
I’ve had lots of HO’s reach out in the last week looking for a Xmas sitter. Some are established HO’s on THS and say they’ve never struggled to get a sitter before. Not sure what’s changed?
Maybe THS will need to address the so called in balance between sitters and HO that many sitters feel at the moment?
Oh, this is a phenomenon. I am not familiar with as I am an HO and new to this forum. Am I understanding correctly that the imbalance you’re talking about is there are more owners looking for sits than there are sitters?
Make sure your listing is the best it can be as there is a lot of competition out there, especially at this time of year.
Ensure the title and first photo are attractive and that the wording in your listing outlines the facilities in the home and the responsibilities you expect of the sitter.
I feel reaching out to sitters will be very time consuming and most sitters have already made plans. Much better to concentrate on and boost your listing.
This holiday season I’ve had seven invites, I’ve accepted four, declined two and one had a change of plans and didn’t need a sitter anymore. I try to accept when I can.
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Thank you for your feedback and statistics. I’m now going to go read the article about when to panic about not getting a sitter. 
That definitely seems to be the case at present @Lisabentson7 with literally hundreds of owners looking for sitters over the festive season. @Silversitters has given you the link to add your listing to your forum name so that members may be able to offer suggestions on how to help you attract sitters at this competitive time.
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When @richten1 talks about what sitters feel, I think the imbalance is more about the different ways that THS treats homeowners and sitters.
For example: the overlapping sits. That started with popup warnings, with horribly threatening language. And since a few weeks, sitters are blocked from even contacting homeowners when they have overlapping dates (at least as counted by the buggy THS system).
It causes all kinds of problems for us, for example when an HO says that they will return early. The attitude may be driving sitters to other agencies.
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You are busy! I have just one long sit: 24 days, over Christmas, New Year and Epiphany.
Offer a full fridge of food.
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So sorry to hear that you’ve had a cancellation so close to the most popular holiday season. You did the right thing in scheduling in advance of your need, and then this happened. We are amazed by how many requests we’ve had in the last few weeks for a holiday sit. Although it’s a long shot, have you considered reaching out to any of the other applicants that you didn’t select? Perhaps they are still interested and it couldn’t hurt to ask. Maybe a local sitter, who just wants a change of venue for the holiday. Add some food goodies, and perhaps a token ‘gift’ (from the pet to the sitter) under the tree to open on the holiday. Write a detailed, friendly and personal request, if you decide to invite folks to sit. Add ‘sitter cancelled last minute’ to the title of your sit request. Best of luck!!!
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I think this is a great idea at this stage @Lisabentson7 - make Christmas that bit more special. Great food is such a essential
part of the celebration and often costly and a pain to get whilst also travelling to a sit. Best of luck 
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I accepted every time I was available. My availability is written on my profile.
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We have had 50 + direct invitations to sit this year ( gave up counting at 50 ) and we had to refuse all but six of them because they were for dates that we were unavailable as shown on the calendar which we always keep updated . Most were for dates where we were already committed to a THS sit.
There were 6 requests when we were available but we logistically couldn’t travel the distance to the location/ country where the homeowner lived .
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Would you want THS to block invites for dates that you’re not available?
e.g. a pop up letting that HO know that,“This sitter is booked these dates. Please consider inviting to dates available as shown on their calendar.”
That said, I had more than one HO report that my calendar showed I was unavailable, when I was available. It helped when HO would send me a screenshot that I could share with THS support. Given that history, my preference is for both the site and the app to remove the automatic reporting and blocking that they recently added.
It is unfortunate (and actually quite stupid programming) that THS has two different views of one’s profile. One is the profile preview that one can see oneself. It does not show the calendar. That url is Find the Perfect Pet Sitter! Home & Pet Sitting Made Easy | TrustedHousesitters.com
There is also a url that anybody else can see. Sitters can find that by scrolling down on their Dashboard page, and click “Preview”. Or one can look for oneself among the sitters in one’s own town. With that url one can see one’s calendar.